The 501-page report was published by BISp after some details were disclosed in a newspaper article last weekend.

While West German government control over sport was not comparable to that in East Germany, the authors of the report state: “The participation of many national coaches, sports doctors and officials was in a manner conspicuously similar to the systematic doping system of the GDR.”

Thomas Bach, an IOC vice president from Germany who is running for president of the Olympic body, said an independent commission had been set up to evaluate the report and make recommendations.

“This is a good day for the fight against doping,” he said.

The study was conducted by researchers under the leadership of Giselher Spitzer at Berlin’s Humboldt University with another team based in the University of Muenster.

It was completed in April but publication had been postponed indefinitely because of issues over publishing names. Pressure to publish the full document grew after the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper released details of the report Saturday.

However, the names of athletes appear to have been withheld from the final report.

The report says there was no systematic, state-led doping system before the BISp was established, but that its formation led to a “gradual adaptation to the GDR sports system.”

It states that while some athletes and coaches were opposed to doping, they rarely came forward “as they thought they wouldn’t be listened to due to the popularity of doping coaches, athletes and doctors in the media.”

The investigation was initiated by the German Olympic Sports Confederation in 2008 and commissioned by the BISp, which provided about $700,000 toward the study. Researchers divided the study into three periods: 1950-1972, 1972-1989 and 1989-2007.

“The history of doping in the Federal Republic didn’t start in 1970 … but already in 1949 (with the establishment of West Germany),” the report states.

Researchers found that the methamphetamine Pervitin, which had been used by German soldiers during World War II, was tested extensively in the 1950s despite being banned. Amphetamines remained in extensive use across many German sports, including cycling and track and field, until 1960, the report says.

It quotes Goettingen physician and former soccer player Heinz-Adolf Heper’s assertion from 1949 that amphetamine-related substances had already become “normal” in German soccer toward the end of the decade.

Cologne doctor and professor Wildor Hollmann, who spoke against the use of anabolic steroids on health and ethical grounds, was financed by the BISp to investigate the “influence of blood transfusions” in 1973. The results revealed a “possible doping effect,” according to a BISp file from 1991.

Work with the blood-booster EPO began on March 11, 1988 — two weeks after the Winter Olympics in Calgary, following rumors that Soviet cross-country skiers had used it to improve their performances.

The historians uncovered a letter from FIFA medical committee chairman Mihailo Andrejevic regarding “very fine traces” of the banned stimulant ephedrine that had been found in three unnamed German players at the 1966 World Cup.

The German soccer federation refused access to its archives, the report says.

The researchers also struggled to access official documents covered by a 30-year secrecy rule, and Spitzer told broadcaster RBB Inforadio that all the important files related to doping were destroyed before the project could begin.

Files did reveal that anabolic steroids were being used by West German athletes, including runners, rowers, soccer players and cyclists, as early as 1960. Sports organizations played down studies showing the serious side effects of steroids.

The researchers concluded that effective doping controls were introduced only in the late 1980s and that doping was prevalent even after 1991. A detailed analysis of the period up to 2008 wasn’t possible, the report says, “due to complexity.”